The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work

I highly recommend!

Product in great condition and received as described.

This is a superb book, but you'll have to dig for the good parts. It's an indispensable reference for learning about the games people play and how to play them so you can defend yourself when someone at work is trying to 'mess with your head.' Don't be put off by the 'Gentle' part. You'll really learn how to stand up for your point of view without turning to anger and ineffective communication.Dr. Elgin provides an understanding from a linguistics perspective, as opposed to a psychological one, although she references a lot of psychological articles and studies. It is part scholarly work, part early self-help era work. A lot of the references are old and you can tell the 'at work' version is somewhat slapped together to have another 'contemporary edition' book to sell.That's OK, as there is enough instructive content to outweigh the flaws of this book. Flaws include poor editing. There are scenarios and things that often left me in 'left field,' but once I started skipping around the book it was easy to find the good stuff. Persevere and you'll get a lot of good from this seminal work on 'workplace bullying.' I've wasted a lot of money on books trying to come to terms with this issue.Dr. Elgin lets no one off the hook. She clarifies how one becomes a victim and how to dodge this vulnerability with sound techniques. She also points out how you can learn what needs work in your own language and personality that turn off others, so that you can correct yourself.I like the book so well, despite it's shortcomings, I'm getting for friends and colleagues!

I couldn't read this. I truly wish I had purchased a Kindle version instead. The font is incredibly small and I gave up after a few pages.

The book taught me much about how to protect myself from family and work verbal abuse - especially the kind that poses as a "joke" but is really an all out verbal assault. I also learned how to watch my own language with a very important section on "touch dominate" people and on how to train your own voice to be professional and pleasant. I just ordered the book "Try to Feel it my Way" to help me understand a touch dominate loved one. Looking forward to what I can learn from it too.

Teaches you how to listen before speaking… would recommend to any person who wants to learn how to circumvent and diminish difficult discussions before you get started. Got someone who gets in your face, this will help set up the discussion with that problematic dialogue and you will be surprised at the increase in the channel of communication; you may end up liking that person. ALSO, if you are the person who gets in other people's face it will help you formulate your critiquing and be more effective.

To me English being my second language the book series of Gentle Art of Verbal Self -Defense were very useful. I did not realise, that subtle verbal aggression is so common. I used some of the techniques described to a very good effect. For people who have never been on the receiving end of this type of passive intimidation probably difficult to comprehend its usefulness. In my opinion to ignore such a form of broken communication only gives the perpetrator the courage to continue.

After taking some time to describe why she's qualified to write about the English language, the author spends a brief couple pages espousing some personal views of the language, then goes on to write a baseless book on psychology in the workplace. The book isn't about language and the author isn't qualified to write about what the book really is about.Anyone who has ever worked in an office and most who haven't should have figured out everything in this book. The examples are contrived and not very relevant to real life. Unless you live on a movie set, this stuff doesn't happen like this anymore. Maybe it did in the 80s, but we're past the generation where HR doesn't control the workplace.Save the money and buy a proper book on either psychology or something like NLP. Interestingly enough, the author goes through the trouble of discrediting some books that are more useful than the one she's written.

The first few chapters of this book were great, bit after that it became a very tedious read. A few interesting ideas initially, but after a while this book read as very outdated with an obvious American take on things. I didn't really come away with any useful information after finishing.

brilliant read

Found some useful information and techniques, though it mostly deals with colleague type interactions, It didn't cover verbal abuse from members of the public as much as I was hoping for.

Excellent vocabulaire et de très bon conseils !je le recommande vraiment car il sert à la vie de tous les jours.